1. Wang, Yimin."Beyond the Examination? Negotiating Reform Policies of College Entrance Examination in China" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the 54th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society, Palmer House Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, <Not Available>. 2019-09-15 <http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p400440_index.html>

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptAbstract: The National College Entrance Examination (CEE) in China has been considered as a high stake examination. Along with the higher education reform process during the past decade, different layers of tangible and intangible inequalities issues concerning higher education access such as regional and rural-urban disparity have emerged in heated concern and public debate. At the same time, these related reforms and the expansion of higher education sectors in China also created a space for different stake-holders to negotiate the policies and the possibilities of reconsidering and (potentially) eliminating these existing inequalities on the move towards the era of the mass higher education. Employing the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis and drawing on the data from reform proposals and initiatives on CEE of three cities/provinces (i.e. Beijing, Guangdong, and Zhejiang), this paper first analyzes how these documents have addressed (or not addressed) these inequality and quality issues, as well as to what extent and through what means. By comparing this data with the related media coverage on the debates and voices on examination and educational reforms happening in the public sphere, this paper will then delve into the deeper issue of looking at whose voices have been heard and honored under which kind of circumstances and for what reasons, during the formation of these policy proposals and initiatives. Towards the end, we also attempt to analyze the possible consequences of these reform proposals by taking serious considerations of different stake-holders at the levels of individual, institutional and national.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptReview Method: Peer ReviewedAbstract: With recent events, the problem of school violence has come to the attention of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and even researchers. Little is known, however, about the effects of school-level violence and conflict on student-level educational achievement. The present research utilizes Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) and data from the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Survey to assess the impact on of school-level violence on student achievement. In addition, racial inequalities in achievement are integrated to assess whether or not minority adolescents struggle more than non-Hispanic white adolescents in schools with higher levels of violence and conflict. HLM results indicate that, consistent with past research Hispanic, African-American, and Native American students are falling behind their white counterparts in math and reading achievement. This effect, however, varies across schools. Despite bivariate relationships, no direct relationships were found between school-level violence and student-level achievement in reading or math, with the exception of drug and alcohol related problems. Significant interactions between race and school-level violence are found however. For African-American students, though not for white students, achievement is significantly lower for students in schools with more low-violence like bullying, misbehavior and disrespect. Asian American students were found to be struggling in schools with extensive mid-level violence, including those with high levels of physical fighting, vandalism, and burglary. Overall, a few significant interactions, suggest that the interplay between race, school violence, and achievement does exist. There needs to be continued research to further assess school-level impacts on students.

Publication Type: Paper AbstractReview Method: Peer ReviewedAbstract: Forensic expertise in the investigation of atrocity crimes - the criteria that govern methods, interpretation and evidence admissibility at trial – has drawn largely from North American and Western European domestic forensic practice as applied in the post-war former Yugoslavia. With a global justice shift to the International Criminal Court and regional hybrid courts (e.g., Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Extraordinary African Chambers), conventional forensic practice is facing challenges to the applicability and definition of expertise. With genocide and crimes against humanity hinging on terms such as “race” and “ethnicity”, who qualifies as an expert in defining victim and perpetrator groups, particularly considering past and present impact of European colonialism in Africa? How do court experts represent social categories as scientific facts at trial? How able are North American forensic anthropologists, for example, to interpret funerary custom in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to discern “normal” from “abnormal” burial custom, thereby identifying evidence of criminal mass killings? This paper examines transcripts of expert witness testimony from trials at the International Criminal Court and forensic experience from the investigation of former Chadian President Hissène Habré. It scrutinizes the criteria by which crimes are judged, the applicability and ethics of recent practice and explores implications for future forensic investigation. Recent shifts in the administration of international justice have adapted to local and regional influence, a product of the impossibility of copy-paste solutions. Similarly, though less-so, forensic investigation of international crimes seems to have adapted, in part due to the significant influence of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. This adaptation, however, has occurred in an almost improvised and ill-defined way that is dissonant with the domestic, “Western” movement of standardization and formalization in forensic science.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptAbstract: Nearly 4,500 offenders are currently being held under Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) statutes that allow for the post-sentence civil commitment of offenders. This talk will present findings from a large-scale study (N = 1500) examining selection for SVP commitment in New Jersey. Specifically, we will examine factors that differentially predict whether or not sex offenders are referred for civil commitment. Preliminary analyses suggest that committed offenders have significantly higher Static-99 (M = 5.55) total scores than offenders not referred commitment, whether from a prison based treatment facility (M = 1.98) or the prison general population sample (M= 2.25). Using predictive modeling, this study will examine additional factors that predict SVP commitment.

5. Kepplinger, Hans."Examining Reality Before Examining Its Depiction in the News" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA, <Not Available>. 2019-09-15 <http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p169542_index.html>

Publication Type: Session PaperAbstract: It is safe to assume that most people get most of their information about topical events from TV news and that they believe the TV presents a reliable and adequate picture of reality. In recent years, however, there has been a growing trend of fabricated news, implicitly based on the assumption that reported reality would occur as it does even without the expectation of being reported and that TV news usually presents an undistorted picture of events. These assumptions are questionable because many such (mostly scandalous) events would never occur without the expectation of being reported. Thus instead of beginning with traditional content analysis based on qualitative case studies and/or quantitative data, future research should set off with examining the reality being covered, thereby determining how and why TV news fails to present a reliable and adequate picture of reality?